All Unified CCE VM vDisks must be deployed Thick Provisioned, Lazy, or Eager Zeroed. Thin Provisioned vDisks are not supported.

Storage Area Networks and Specs-based policy storage solutions must be able to handle the following Unified CCE application disk I/O characteristics. Tested Reference Configurations (TRC) for Cisco UCS C-Series servers do not need to apply these requirements against their Direct Attached Storage Arrays (DAS).

The data below is based on CCE 10.0(1) running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.

Unified CCE Co-residency Support Policy

Unified CCE Co-residency policy is stated as Limited, though it may actually align to one of the other policies. This is due to IO limitations for Direct Attached Storage (DAS) arrays used with Unified CCE database applications.

Note: For any single DAS array, you cannot have two or more of the following on any single array: Logger, Rogger, Progger, HDS, or CVP Reporting Server.

Unified CCE otherwise adheres to the following Co-residency policies by version:

Version

Co-residency Policy

10.0(x)

Full

8.0(2+) - 9.0(x)

UC on UC only

Hybrid Unified CCE Deployment Options

Unified CCE 10.0(x) and later supports only virtualized deployment on VMware vSphere ESXi. This is inclusive of Unified ICME, CCH, and ICMH.

Unified CCE allows for application VMs to be deployed on different supported servers, whether Cisco UCS or 3rd Party Specs-based within the same or multiple data center sites, excepting duplex and synchronized operation applications, which have a more restrictive requirement.

The following Unified CCE applications are hardware-constrained for side A and B pairings:

Router

Logger

Rogger

Peripheral Gateway (PG, all types)

These require that the A and B application instances be installed to separate host servers have exact matching:

Processor make, model and speed

Memory type and speed

Mainboard chipset controller

Installing VMware Tools

You must install the VMware Tools on each of the VMs, and you must use all of the VMware Tools default settings. Please refer to VMware documentation for instructions on installing or upgrading VMware Tools on the VM with the Windows operating system.

Timekeeping Best Practices for Windows

ESXi hosts and domain controllers must synchronize the time from the same NTP source.

When Unified CCE virtual machines join the domain, they synchronize the time with the domain controller automatically using w32time.

Be sure that Time synchronization between the virtual machine and the host operating system in the VMware Tools tool box GUI of the Windows Server 2008 R2 guest operating system remains deselected; this check box is deselected by default.

System Performance Monitoring Using ESXi Counters

Make sure that you follow VMware's ESXi requirements and the SAN vendor's instructions for optimal system performance.

VMware provides a set of system monitoring tools for the ESXi platform and the VMs. These tools are accessible through the VMware Infrastructure Client or through VirtualCenter.

You can use Windows Performance Monitor to monitor the performance of the VMs. Be aware that the CPU counters may not reflect the physical CPU usage since the Windows Operating System has no direct access to the physical CPU.

You can use Unified CCE Serviceability Tools and Unified CCE reports to monitor the operation and performance of the Unified CCE system.

The ESXi Server and the virtual machines must operate within the limit of the following ESXi performance counters.

Use the following ESXi counters as performance indicators.

Category

Object

Measurement

Units

Description

Performance Indication and Threshold

CPU

ESXi Server

VM

CPU Usage (Average)

Percent

CPU Usage Average in percentage for:

ESXi server

Virtual machine

Less than 60%.

CPU

ESXi Server Processor#

VM_vCPU#

CPU Usage 0 - 7 (Average)

Percent

CPU Usage Average for:

ESXi server for processors 0 to 7

Virtual machine vCPUs

Less than 60%

CPU

VM

CPU Ready

mSec

The time a virtual machine or other process waits in the queue in a ready-to-run state before it can be scheduled on a CPU.

The raw counter value cannot be used by itself but rather should be converted to a percentage (i.e., the percentage of time spent waiting for a CPU to become ready) using the following formula (assume sample interval is 20 seconds and the CPU Ready counter value is 400ms):

Memory that is actively used or being referenced by the guest OS and its applications. When it exceeds the amount of memory on the host, the server starts a memory swap.

Less than 80% of the Granted memory

Memory

ESXi Server

VM

Memory Balloon (Average)

KB

ESXi uses balloon driver to recover memory from less memory-intensive VMs so it can be used by those with larger active sets of memory.

Since the memory is not overcommitted, this should be 0 or very low. Note: ESXi performs memory ballooning before memory swap.

Memory

ESXi Server

VM

Memory Swap used (Average)

KB

ESXi Server swap usage. Use the disk for RAM swap

Since the memory is not overcommitted, this should be 0 or very low.

Disk

ESXi Server

VM

Disk Usage (Average)

KBps

Disk Usage = Disk Read rate + Disk Write rate

Ensure that the SAN is configured to handle this amount of disk I/O.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VMbha ID

Disk Usage Read rate

KBps

Rate of reading data from the disk

Ensure that the SAN is configured to handle this amount of disk I/O.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VM vmhba ID

Disk Usage Write rate

KBps

Rate of writing data to the disk

Ensure that the SAN is configured to handle this amount of disk I/O.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VM vmhba ID

Disk Commands Issued

Number

Number of disk commands issued on this disk in the period.

Ensure that the SAN is configured to handle this amount of disk I/O.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VM vmhba ID

Disk Command Aborts

Number

Number of disk commands aborted on this disk in the period. Disk command aborts when the disk array is taking too long to respond to the command. (Command timeout)

This counter should be zero. A non-zero value indicates a storage performance issue.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VM vmhba ID

Disk Command Latency

mSec

The average amount of time taken for a command from the perspective of a Guest OS. Disk Command Latency = Kernel Command Latency + Physical Device Command Latency.

A latency of 24ms or greater is indicative of a possibly overutilized, misbehaving, or misconfigured disk array.

Disk

ESXi Server vmhba ID

VM vmhba ID

Kernel Disk Command Latency

mSec

The average time spent in ESXi Server VMKernel per command.

Kernel Command Latency must be very small in comparison to the Physical Device Command Latency, and it must be close to zero. Kernel Command Latency can be high, or even higher than the Physical Device Command Latency if there is a lot of queuing in the ESXi kernel.

Network

ESXi Server

VM

Network Usage (Average)

KBps

Network Usage = Data receive rate + Data transmit rate

Less than 30% of the available network bandwidth; for example, less than 300Mps for a 1G network.

Network

ESXi Server vmnic ID

VM vmnic ID

Network Data Receive Rate

KBps

Less than 30% of the available network bandwidth; for example, less than 300Mps for a 1G network.

Network

ESXi Server vmnic ID

VM vmnic ID

Network Data Transmit Rate

KBps

The average rate at which data is transmitted on this Ethernet port

Less than 30% of the available network bandwidth; for example, less than 300Mps for a 1G network.